Day 34
Mark woke me up last night to announce that he wants to be in a polyamorous relationship. Cannot believe it.
I mean we have been together for six years and Mark and I have talked about polyamory I think twice: once when we weren’t yet officially together (and I think ‘polyamory’ in that conversation was just Mark’s code for “im still sleeping with other people”) and once about two years in when we were going through a stale spell. Closest we ever got was he danced up on some girl at a club once, like middle school grinding, while I watched, and then we talked about it at length. Since that: nothing. And though I’ve always been ‘open to the idea’ and have always kept that door open for Mark – saying things like You’re not a captive in this relationship, I want you to be open to love, etc – I’m forced to admit now that I have been open to the idea because I thought it would never actually happen. Which, I’m sure, Mark could tell.
But last night he says he wants it. He thinks it’s the logical next step for us. Which, okay. I value his communication. But srsly, Mark waits until we’re in space with six other people to bring this up again?
First reaction: With who? Yolanda? Cassandra? Deius? And: Mark doesn’t know. He doesn’t even have anyone in mind. He just wanted to – wait for it – take my temperature on the issue in a nonpressured way. Well Mark, consider this thermometer roughly shoved up my ass, is what I said. And I don’t think he was expecting that from his longtime gf who’s ‘open’ and says prayers in Sanksrit before going to sleep. And he says: Well, it was just on my mind and obviously I will respect what you feel comfortable with in the relationship but I just wanted to be honest. And then he switched his headset into Alone Mode and I floated in space for a long long time before I went to sleep.
Day 40
You know how in movies about space missions the astronauts are always referencing little spiralbound notebooks when something on the ship goes wrong and they have to figure out how to fix it? Well, those are real. I found one and was leafing through it today and got to a page that said POWER CONSERVATION CASCADE IN CASE OF SOLAR CELL FAILURE that orders what systems get shut down first and which stay on. Basic systems, things like the heaters and air filter. But guess what the last system in line is? The one with the highest priority, in case the ship breaks and we float in space until we die? The cameras.
Felt pretty rattled after that so was a relief to get into some projects. Ratings I guess are through the roof but M. (M. Night? M. Night Shyamalamalan?) wants to get as broad a fanbase as possible while the show’s still new because he’s expecting a downturn in the second half of our two-year trip TO Mars and they want to Fatten up for the winter, he said, a turn of phrase I don’t like much.
The way this afternoon went: Yuri and Donnell are in the cockpit doing a simultaneous Q&A with Scientific American and Russian Standard Vodka, and the three media bays are all full: Yolanda’s live chatting with RHOM viewers in her low-cut AstraTankini, Cassandra is pretending to be Deius and is live chatting with WebMD users, Jocelyn is in a Google Hangout with three members of last season’s cast of Toll of the Spatula, I am demoing my Zero-G Isometric Yogini Workout for Lulu Lemon. I’ve got a camera trained on me and am wearing a bulb mic like the Shamwow guy. And Mark and Deius are shooting and re-shooting a video for the National Commission for Science and Technology for the country of Malawi, who’s decided that they want to jazz up how they present Newton’s second law…normally, I’d say this was maybe a waste of time but we’ve honestly got nothing better to do. I am doing my isometric boat pose, curled into a donut shape and spinning slowly like I’m being keel-hauled. I watch the screen where a live Lulu Lemon audience follows my lead, a dozen or so slender, pastel-hued bodies bumping gently inside the fuselage of a diving airplane like attractive tropical fish feathering gently in the current. But I’m really watching Mark.
Newton’s second law, “equal and opposite,” basically says that if you push on something, that thing pushes back on you with equal force. Mark and Deius, on their eighth take, hover facing one another in the lounge, their hands clasped like they’re about to dance, or wrestle. The routine is they say in unison, “For every action there’s a reaction that’s,” and then they pause for emphasis, then half-yell with campy joy: “Equal and opposite!” And then they push against one another’s hands and glide backwards away from one another, grinning with pure idiocy, until they bump into the lounge’s opposite walls and break into giggles. And after the eighth take, which went perfectly well, just like the others, and is a good enough example of Newton’s second law for any government’s commission, including Malawi’s, they push off the wall and glide back to one another and sort of grapple and clutch when they collide, and when they stabilize and are again clasping hands, alone in the lounge, I see Mark’s eyes and I think: did they just have a moment? Have they been having multiple moments? And I am so incredulous, so distracted, that I forget that my yoga class is executing each isometric move inside a diving 757 and thus has only thirty seconds or so for each pose, and I hear squeals and look from Mark’s face to the screen, where the 757 is preparing to exit its dive and the yoginis are athletically leaping from ceiling and walls, swinging off one another like gibbons, and harnessing themselves into benches, except for one lavender yogini who flails purchaseless in the fuselage’s middle like an aquatic plant, stuck, with nothing to push on.
In front of Media Bay Two small cheers erupt from around Earth as Yolanda prepares to strip down to her skivvies and show the live audience what her ass does in zero-g, as they’ve just crowdfunded the required two million dollars for breast cancer research.